Woman Killed, 12 Injured in China Mall Knife Attack

A woman was killed and 12 other people injured after a man carried out a knife attack in a mall in a busy shopping district in the Chinese capital on Sunday.

According to a statement by Beijing police, a man had been detained over the early afternoon attack at the Joy City Mall in the Xidan district.

Authorities said three men and 10 women were sent to hospital after the attack and one woman died of her injuries.

The detained man is only identified as a 35-year-old surnamed Zhu from the northern province of Henan.

Police said the man had already confessed to carrying out the attack to “express his discontent,” but did not elaborate.

However, the government has also blamed some knife attacks on militants from the violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang, where Beijing says it faces an Islamist insurgency, adding to China’s nervousness about such incidents.

Thirty-one people were killed in 2014 during a knife attack at Kunming train station in southwestern China that the government said was the work of Xinjiang militants. Police shot dead four of the attackers.